In Siberia’s Yana Highlands, a chunk of land roughly the shape of a giant stingray has been sinking down into a very large pit. Called the Doorway to the Underworld, the Batagay Megaslump (also known as the Batagaika Crater) is 200 acres and continues to widen.

Il est caché dans la mémoire populaire collective comme un fétiche, une statue d’une divinité effrayante et fascinante devant laquelle les voyageurs ne pourront s’empêcher de se prosterner.

Many people are deeply invested in what happens when they die. Entire religions are constructed around theories of the afterlife. Christianity and Islam promise special places to go to while Buddhism prescribes breaking free from the hamster wheel of existence to leave the cycle of death and birth.

J.G. Ballard got his first taste of fame—or infamy, some might suggest—as author of the strangest and most shocking science fiction novels of the New Wave movement.

In the 1970s, science fiction writer JG Ballard was intrigued by the growing capabilities of computers – so used one to compose poems. They were a first step on the road to ChatGPT.

For weeks now, a timer on the Vogue website has been ticking off the seconds, the anticipation within the fashion world bursting at the seams. But finally: the 2024 Met Gala is here. There is, however, something different about this evening’s show.

Patient One was 24 years old and pregnant with her third child when she was taken off life support. It was 2014. A couple of years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a disorder that caused an irregular heartbeat, and during her two previous pregnancies she had suffered seizures and faintings.

The man who stopped Salomea Genin on the street in West Berlin, on that August morning in 1961, smiled as if he knew her. He was a “rather handsome gentleman,” she recalls, though he would have been hard to pick out in a crowd.

A little-remembered TV film broadcast on the BBC, Robin Redbreast was a chilling parable – about a single, pregnant woman trapped in a sinister village – that was ahead of its time. Now a new stage adaptation is putting it back in the spotlight.

Oh, so weird. I thought they were meant to be more careful with these. Anyway I’ve been given a leaked script from the new – and final – series of Inside No 9 (8 May, 10pm, BBC Two), so I suppose it is my duty as a journalist to publicly leak it.